Crying Calves, Distressed Mothers and We Are Responsible

Friends, I’ve been very busy the last few weeks and unfortunately I will be till probably mid July so I haven’t been able to do a podcast for a while, but I thought I would share an experience I had today. Please watch this short vid:

Many cows over the fence in the large pasture have been crying day and night for the last 2 days. For those who are not vegan, this is a regular occurrence on any farm that supplies animal products (meat, dairy etc) to supermarkets. The farmer who recently sold his 100 acres said he was “simplifying” his herd. That’s code for “taking them away to be murdered because he needs to reduce the numbers since selling his land”.

So the farmer has separated the mothers from their calves and the mothers were being taken away to be killed. The calves will never see their mothers again because the mothers have been murdered. And I can imagine the mothers were crying and extremely distressed all the way to the slaughterhouse right up until they were murdered.

All this tragedy and violence takes place simply because we think animal products “taste good”. We certainly don’t need them to survive or be healthy. Distressing events like this one take place regularly, not just when farmers sell their land. It is a normal occurrence on any farm, particularly dairy farms.

I decided to go out because being witness to this tragedy was too distressing, and upon my return the calves were gone and the mothers were gone. If the calves were not killed too, then wherever they are, they are still crying for their mothers. This is the unspeakable bereavement which occurs every day everywhere all over the world. To do this to sentient beings is morally wrong.

The truth is, most of us are living unconsciously. We live unconsciously, and we do not think about, or wish to think about the tremendous violence we participate in because we create demand for animal products. We need to ask ourselves: Do we really think this is OK? Do we really think it’s justifiable? And we need to consider, if we need to ask ourselves this question, then it probably isn’t OK.

A friend of the farmer knew I was vegan and said to me, “you think differently but in this place, this is how things are”. I replied that one does not have to be vegan to see that there is something very wrong about removing crying children from their distressed mothers and then murdering them. I can guarantee if I lined up a group of non-vegans in front of these crying calves for 2 days, most people would probably find the experience distressing and would probably consider this terribly wrong. And yet because all we see in supermarkets are neat little packages of “meat” and very attractive containers of dairy products, we do not need to think about (nor to we want to think about it) or see what goes on behind these products.